SIGNS OF CARDIAC ARRESTCardiac arrest strikes immediately and without warning. Here are the signs:- Sudden loss of responsiveness (no response to tapping on shoulders).- No normal breathing (the victim does not take a normal breath when you tilt the head up and check for at least five seconds). If these signs of cardiac arrest are present, tell someone to call 911 or your emergency response number and get an AED (if one is available) and begin CPR immediately.SOURCE: American Heart Association

Mary Beth Anthony was getting dressed for her daughter's wedding Aug. 10 when she stepped into her bedroom and saw her husband, Lee, facedown on the Erie couple's bed.

His skin was blue, and he was making guttural noises.

"I was hysterical. I'm a nurse, but I didn't know what to do," said Mary Beth Anthony. "I called 911 and tried to get him off the bed, but I couldn't move him."

Lee Anthony had gone into cardiac arrest. A small blockage in his coronary artery had disrupted his heart's electrical rhythm and made his heart quiver like Jell-O instead of pumping blood to his lungs, brain and other vital organs.

Left untreated, Lee Anthony would have died within a few minutes.

"People in cardiac arrest survive anywhere from four to 10 minutes out in the field," said Sam Ward, M.D., a Saint Vincent cardiologist who treated Lee Anthony. "The chances for survival improve if you get bystander CPR and defibrillation."

Lee Anthony, 58, had battled heart disease for almost 20 years. The Saint Vincent Hospital X-ray technician underwent quadruple-bypass coronary-artery surgery after suffering a heart attack when he was 39.

Since then, he has had at least 10 heart catheterizations and 10 stents placed in various coronary arteries.

"Most people have four or five coronary arteries supplying blood to their heart," Lee Anthony said. "I have one working native artery and one bypass artery. All the other ones are closed."

EmergyCare paramedics arrived at the Anthonys' house within minutes. They defibrillated Anthony's heart, got it back into rhythm and took him to Saint Vincent.

He had beat the odds. Less than 11 percent of the people who suffer cardiac arrest outside a hospital survive, according to the American Heart Association.

But he wasn't home free. Doctors were immediately concerned with how long Anthony's brain had gone without blood flow. They kept asking Mary Beth Anthony how many minutes did she think he had been in cardiac arrest.

Lee Anthony was whisked to the heart catheterization lab, where doctors found a small blockage and inserted a stent to keep the coronary artery open.

By then, the wedding couple had arrived at Saint Vincent, with bride-to-be Sarah Anthony wearing her wedding hairpiece and groom-to-be Curtis Weimer in his tuxedo.

"Dr. Ward came out and told us to go ahead with the wedding, and they would take care of Lee," Mary Beth Anthony said. "We probably wouldn't have listened to anybody else, but we have known Sam and his family for years."

While Lee Anthony's family went to the wedding and reception, he was taken to the cardiovascular intensive care unit. Doctors used cooling blankets to lower his body temperature to 85 degrees for about 48 hours in an effort to limit any brain damage due to the cardiac arrest.

"We started cooling people about a half-dozen years ago," Ward said. "It helps prevent brain damage. It's the same principle you see when people are rescued from freezing water and are alive even if they were underwater for an hour."

But there were no guarantees. Mary Beth Anthony said two other doctors told her Anthony would never wake up.

Two days after they started the cooling process, doctors warmed Anthony and allowed him to wake up. The first thing Anthony remembers is hearing the sounds of a baseball game coming from the television in his room.

"I hear the sound of a ball hitting a mitt," Anthony said. "I don't know why I'm in the hospital, but hearing the sounds of baseball were soothing to me."

He woke up fully over the next day or so, normal except for some short-term memory loss. He remained at Saint Vincent for nine days before being discharged with a defibrillator implanted in his chest.

He doesn't remember much about the entire month of August and said he's disappointed that he missed the wedding -- he gets too emotional to even look at his daughter's wedding album -- and can't recall any near-death experiences.

"I didn't see any lights, no visions of my (deceased) parents," Anthony said. "It would have been great if my parents would have been there and told me to go back and finish something."

Since his discharge, Lee Anthony's defibrillator has gone off twice, shocking his heart back into a normal rhythm.

Once he was mowing a neighbor's yard, and the other time he was shoveling his driveway -- an activity he is forbidden to do.

"I came to lying on my driveway with a headache," Anthony said. "I didn't want Mary Beth to know what happened, so I quickly went inside, grabbed my things and went to work. I told her the next night at dinner, so she couldn't hit me."

Lee Anthony is back at work, helping other heart patients at Saint Vincent. His prognosis is pretty good for a man who suffered cardiac arrest, has 20 years of heart problems and is also suffering from polycystic kidney disease, Ward said.

"Lee is in a good, safe place," Ward said. "He has his defibrillator. He's at risk for heart failure, but he doesn't have heart failure. The kidney disease is not related to his heart issues.

"He's a lucky guy."

DAVID BRUCE can be reached at 870-1736 or by e-mail. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ETNbruce.